Protect Democracy: The Movement for Freedom — March 16, 2026
March 16, 2026: DHS runs airport propaganda, ICE builds secret warehouse prisons, and Republicans block Iran war hearings. Protect Democracy with People Power United.
🗽 Protect Democracy: Fair Maps, Fair Votes, Our Future
Powerful interests manipulate voting maps, weaken oversight, and rewrite the rules to protect themselves while silencing the public. These tactics are deliberate, coordinated, and increasingly normalized. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and policies designed to make it harder to register, vote, and be counted are not random. They target Black and Brown communities, low-income families, the elderly — everyone historically pushed to the margins — because silencing the most vulnerable is how the powerful stay powerful.
That’s why Protect Democracy exists — to inform, connect, and mobilize. We break down the policies reshaping our democracy, name who benefits from voter suppression and dismantling democracy, and give you clear ways to push back. Freedom is a daily act. And democracy survives only when the people defend it.
Why the Grassroots Resistance Can’t Wait
💥 Your Power in Action: What You Can Do Today
⚖️ Take action: Tell the DOJ to remove Trump’s banner from headquarters
🛡️ Take action: Tell Social Security to stop sharing data with ICE
📂 Take action: Demand transparency and release the names in the Epstein files
💳 Take action: Tell Congress to cap credit card interest rates at 10%
🗳️ Take action: Stop Republicans’ new attack on voting rights
👑 Bonus action: Sign up for the next national No Kings Day of Action and show up in solidarity with everyone whose rights are under attack.
🗳️ Bonus action: Register to vote, vote in every election, and help your community do the same. Our freedoms are won and lost at the ballot box.
The movement for defending and protecting democracy starts here.
📰 What’s Happening: Stories Shaping Our Democracy Right Now
🛂 DHS Uses TSA Screens as a Propaganda Tool — and Airports Are Refusing
With TSA workers entering their second month without paychecks and flight delays mounting nationwide, the Department of Homeland Security rolled out a video to play above TSA security lines blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport joined LaGuardia, JFK, Newark, Portland, and others in refusing to air it, citing the video’s political nature, potential Hatch Act violations, and internal policies against partisan content. The TSA workers forced to keep airports running without pay had no say in any of it. Seattle Times
Why it matters for democracy: When the government uses federal infrastructure — the screens above your security line — to run partisan attack ads, that is not communications. That is state propaganda. The airports that refused are doing exactly what democratic institutions are supposed to do: drawing a line. The rest of us should draw the same one.
🏛️ Jeffries Launches Discharge Petition to Fund DHS — Without ICE
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced a discharge petition to force a floor vote on legislation that would fund TSA, FEMA, and CISA — the agencies keeping Americans safe — while withholding funding from ICE and CBP until meaningful accountability reforms are in place. The DHS shutdown has dragged on for over 30 days. “The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for more than 30 days because Donald Trump and Republican extremists refuse to get ICE under control,” Jeffries wrote to colleagues. The petition needs 218 signatures to force a vote. The Hill
Why it matters for democracy: This is democracy working the way it’s supposed to — the minority using every procedural tool available to force accountability on an agency that has killed American citizens and is building a detention infrastructure with no public oversight. Contact your representative today and demand they sign on.
🏭 ICE Is Building a $38 Billion Network of Warehouse Prisons
The Trump administration’s “ICE Detention Reengineering Initiative” is on track to become the largest expansion of immigration detention in U.S. history — a network of 34 federally owned warehouse facilities that could hold tens of thousands of people, funded by $45 billion from last year’s reconciliation bill. Communities across Georgia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Utah, and Arizona are fighting back after learning their neighborhoods were quietly selected as detention sites. Even Republican governors in New Hampshire and Mississippi pushed back after the plans became public — and community organizing has already killed several proposed sites. The Atlantic
Why it matters for democracy: Secret warehouse prisons, bought without community input, operated by an agency that gutted its own civil rights oversight offices — this is not immigration enforcement. This is the infrastructure of authoritarianism. When communities organize and push back, plans get scrapped. That is people power. Keep advocating for safe communities and accountability.
⚔️ Three Weeks Into the Iran War, Republicans Still Block Public Hearings
The United States’ war with Iran has entered its third week, costing an estimated $1 billion per day, and Congress has yet to hold a single public hearing on the conflict. Senate Democrats are demanding testimony from top administration officials and threatening to force a series of floor votes to compel Republicans to act. “We’ve had no oversight whatsoever over what the executive is doing as we’re spending a billion dollars a day,” said Sen. Cory Booker. Senate Majority Leader Thune has so far refused to schedule any hearings. Seattle Times
Why it matters for democracy: The Constitution requires Congress to declare war. Republicans are handing one man unchecked authority to bomb sovereign nations with no public justification and no accountability. Democrats are using every tool available. The question is whether the rest of us will demand the same.
🌎 Democrats File War Powers Resolutions to Block Trump on Cuba — and Iran
Senators Tim Kaine, Ruben Gallego, and Adam Schiff introduced a war powers resolution to prevent Trump from launching military action against Cuba without congressional authorization, after Trump openly threatened a “friendly or not friendly takeover” of the island. Democrats are simultaneously forcing a series of Iran war powers votes on the Senate floor, determined to put every Republican on record. “He operates with the belief that the U.S. military is a palace guard,” Kaine said. Republicans have blocked every such resolution on Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba so far. The Hill | The Atlantic
Why it matters for democracy: When one president can launch wars, blockade nations, and threaten invasions — all without a single vote from the people’s representatives — the Constitution is not a governing document. It’s a suggestion. Every war powers vote that forces Republicans on record is a brick in the wall of accountability we are building.
🔍 The Broader Pattern for Defending and Protecting Democracy: This Is the Blueprint.
Step back and the shape becomes clear. A government shutdown weaponized as propaganda. Warehouse prisons built in secret. An unauthorized war with no hearings and no endgame. These are not separate failures of governance — they are the coordinated outputs of a playbook designed to centralize power, silence oversight, and make the machinery of government serve one man’s agenda. The ICE warehouses weren’t built for security. They were built for control. The propaganda video wasn’t made for TSA travelers. It was made to normalize the use of federal infrastructure as a partisan weapon.
Fascism thrives when people feel powerless. That is exactly why people power threatens it — and why airports refusing to run propaganda, communities blocking warehouse prisons, and senators forcing vote after vote on an illegal war all matter. Democracy is not dying quietly while we watch. It is being defended, loudly and daily, by organized people who refuse to accept that this is just how things are. That is us. That has always been us. The work continues.
🔥 What Comes Next: The Work Is Ours
For nearly 250 years, American democracy has never been handed down by kings or bought by billionaires. It has been built — and defended — by ordinary people. That lineage belongs to us. The next chapter is ours to write.
Democracy is not a monument. It is a practice. When we organize, vote, and resist together, we assert who we are: a people who believe that power belongs to the many, not the few. That freedom over fascism is not a slogan — it is a standard.
You already took action at the top of this page. Good. Now share this post with someone who needs to read it. Show up to the next action. Stay in the movement.
Freedom over fascism. Progress over fear. Power to the people — every single one of us.
Together, we can champion our rights, freedoms, and democracy, hold our leaders accountable to the people’s will, and inspire voters to make a meaningful difference.
Laurie Woodward Garcia (paid with hugs and kisses, not bought by special interests) Leader, People Power United
People Power United | In this community, we will always speak out against racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny, sexism, ageism, ableism, sizeism, elitism, transphobia, misogynoir, and bigotry!
This is our moment to rise, resist, and reclaim our rights, freedoms, rule of law, and democracy. Millions of Americans are already refusing to back down — in the streets, at the ballot box, and in their communities.
Every movement that was ever won started with people who refused to quit. We are those people.
The future is not lost. It is being built — by us, right now.